WHEEL OF CHANGE: A Model for Personal Transformation
By Robert Gass
"One of the most difficult things is not to change
society – but to change yourself.”
Nelson Mandela
The Wheel of Change is a powerful tool for facilitating individual transformation –
our own and those with whom we may coach, mentor or support.
Many of our efforts to make change in our lives fail. Gym memberships skyrocket every
January as a result of New Year’s resolutions. However, 80% of new members drop out
within 30-60 days. And less than 5% stick with their exercise goals.
Professional help is no magic bullet for individual change efforts. Almost 50% of
psychotherapy patients drop out before completing treatment. For those who persist,
success is debatable. For example, research shows that fewer than 50% of married
couples completing counseling end up happily married.
The Wheel of Change is a systems approach to change. We humans are a complex
system, encompassing an inner life (our thoughts and feelings), habits of behavior, and
an external environment that has huge impact on us. Systems by their nature tend to
resist change. Most change efforts fail because they fail to address the system as a
whole. We may experience what seems like progress, or even a breakthrough, but all
too often the system, like a rubber band, tends to pull us back.
The Wheel of Change guides us to attend in an integrated way to each of these
three domains:
1. Heart-Mind1
our inner life: our beliefs, emotions, motivation, etc.
2. Behavior Change
our behavior, our habits, the choices we make to act
and not to act
3. Structural Change
our environment: everything external that makes up our “life”
1
Many cultures consider the heart and mind to be one integrated system. Classical Chinese
philosophy, for example, use the word Xin to express the unifying concept of heart-mind, said
to guide all human actions.
This tool is available online at
stproject.org/resources/tools-for-transformation
© 2013 Robert Gass | page 1
THE WHEEL OF CHANGE
A Model for Personal Transformation
HEART-MIND
A skillful personal change program usually begins
with attending to our heart-mind. If we start by
getting clear about our motivation, our desires and
our concerns, we are far more likely to
engage skillfully with changing our behavior and
the structures of our life. Our inner work helps us
bring our best to the change effort, rather than
fighting the phantoms of our own ambivalence.
By working skillfully with our heart-mind, instead
of failed New Year’s resolutions and
backsliding, we stay the course.
Inner work is a journey, not a destination. We
initiate our personal change programs by attending
to our heart-mind, but we continue our inner work throughout the change process.
Here are just some of the many ways we might attend to the needs of our heart-mind
in a personal change program. Think of this as a checklist. We don’t need to address
all these elements in every change process, but evaluating the need for each element
ensures we attend to all the key variables that might further undermine the changes we
seek.
1. Purpose
It’s always useful to begin by reconnecting to our Purpose – our deeply felt experience
of that which gives our life meaning. Purpose is like a guiding light, providing direction
as well as a source of power and wisdom from which we can draw. Why do we want to
make this change? The stronger the ‘Why’ the greater our motivation to change our
habits and the externals of our lives.
2. Intention
Be clear and aligned on exactly what we want to create. We want to harness our will and
deal proactively with any unclear intent or ambivalence so that we can engage the full
power of our heart-mind behind the change process.
3. Mindfulness & insight:
What are the beliefs or mental frames that potentially stand in the way of change? What
are the shifts in mindset that will open our heart-mind to new possibilities? How will we
stay focused and self-reflective throughout the pace and trance of everyday life? What
practices and tools can we use to remember who we are, what we’re about, and our
intent to change? How can we continue to strengthen our new, empowering mindsets?
This tool is available online at
stproject.org/resources/tools-for-transformation
© 2013 Robert Gass | page 2
THE WHEEL OF CHANGE
A Model for Personal Transformation
4. Self-compassion
Too often the impulse to change is driven by our inner judge, that parental/societal voice
chronically harping on us about who we should be and what we should do. This harsh
nagging inevitably generates inner conflict and various forms of passive resistance. We
fail to follow-through on our New Year’s resolutions. We get impatient with ourselves,
and get demoralized or give up when change doesn’t come easily. The process of
change is actually facilitated by a practice of self-compassion.
5. Self-responsibility
Lurking in the background behind the things in our lives we want to change are often
feelings of victimization: “I can’t… But… I have to… It’s too hard…They won’t let me…
I have too much to do…”
We have reasons, stories and excuses about why things are the way they are. There
may well be real world obstacles we face in trying to make changes in our lives. We
may fail. But in order to skillfully meet these external challenges, we must face and
meet our inner obstacles. Taking full responsibility for our choices helps us mobilize our
full power to accomplish our goals.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE
This inner work is the foundation for personal
change, but change usually also requires us to
shift our habits of behavior--to begin making
different choices about what we do and don’t do.
6. Goals
We begin by translating our intentions into clear
goals and outcomes. What exactly are the new
behaviors needed to realize our goals? How will
we know when we have achieved them? We
need to set milestones along the way to our larger
goals, to help keep us motivated and on track.
7. Commitments
It’s important to make very clear, specific do-able commitments. But we should only
make those commitments we absolutely intend to keep. It’s usually more skillful to make
a series of smaller, more manageable commitments at which we are likely to succeed.
This builds confidence and sustains motivation for the change process.
8. Practices
Our habits are… habitual. We have spent many years unconsciously “practicing” our
patterns of behavior – some functional, others less so. These repetitions form neural
pathways in the brain that are the biological basis of habit. To change behavior, we must
consciously practice new behaviors – again and again, until they become a new habit.
This tool is available online at
stproject.org/resources/tools-for-transformation
© 2013 Robert Gass | page 3
THE WHEEL OF CHANGE
A Model for Personal Transformation
9. Feedback
We need regular feedback to help us keep moving in the direction of our goals.
Imagine if you were trying to learn to play golf and never saw where the ball landed.
We need to get creative about tracking our progress: journaling, feedback from those
who know us, or actual metrics (e.g. # of times we exercised this week or # of days our
mood was positive).
10. Support
We don’t have to go it alone. We all can use encouragement and help in creating our
new habits. This might look like: mobilizing our support network, reaching out to friends
and colleagues, training, coaching, a class or workshop, etc.
STRUCTURES:
We are profoundly impacted by our environment.
To create sustainable change, we will almost
always need to make changes in our external life.
These structural changes feed our heart-mind
and support our new behaviors, creating a selfreinforcing cycle of change (hence the name,
The Wheel of Change.)
11. Activities
Which of our current activities support or inhibit the
changes we wish to make? What changes in
activities will best empower the change process?
Joining a gym? Cutting down on net surfing or
Facebook? Shifting our role at work?
12. Schedule
A Martian anthropologist studying human behavior might well conclude that many of us
are in a slave-master relationship to a small piece of machinery (called “our calendar”)
that appears to continually give us orders of what to do next. We often appear to forget
that we are in charge of our schedule, not vice versa. What changes might we want to
make in the nature, the timing, and the pace of how we schedule our lives?
13. Relationships
We are very influenced by the people we associate with. We want to be conscious of
this in creating our plans for change – just like those struggling to stop drinking need to
avoid social situations where there is alcohol. Are there certain relationships (or groups)
that either support or inhibit the changes we want to make? Are there certain
relationships in which we want to invest more (or less) to best support the changes
we seek to make?
This tool is available online at
stproject.org/resources/tools-for-transformation
© 2013 Robert Gass | page 4
THE WHEEL OF CHANGE
A Model for Personal Transformation
14. Processes:
Processes are the routine methods by which we do things. Some examples of processes
include: how we do our personal planning, the way we organize our work flow, how we
delegate, the way we organize our desk or computer files, or our routine for keeping our
home clean. In planning for change, we want to step back and examine all relevant
processes with a fresh eye to see how they might support or undermine the changes
we seek.
15. Tools
Tools include any physical object: ranging from computer software and smartphones to
bikes and home exercise machines. What additional tools might support the changes we
wish to make?
This tool is available online at
stproject.org/resources/tools-for-transformation
© 2013 Robert Gass | page 5
THE WHEEL OF CHANGE
A Model for Personal Transformation
In planning any given change, we won’t need to attend to every one of these elements,
but the Wheel of Change can help us to identify and address all the critical drivers of
change in each of the three domains of our lives:
•
What is my inner work – the needed shifts in my heart-mind?
•
What changes do I need to make in my behavior?
•
What changes do I need to make in my environment – the structures of my life?
Here are two examples of what this looks like in action:
Challenge #1:
I need to limit my increasing number of speaking engagements without
offending allies.
The Plan:
Heart-Mind
•
Set for myself a clear and compelling personal vision for change.
•
Fully align behind the vision. Deal with any inner unclarity, such as:
o
needing to be needed
o
fear that if I say ‘no’ I may never get more invitations
o
guilt about saying "no"
Behavior
•
Communicate to others about the huge increase in requests.
•
Turn down requests by saying: "I am only able to make XX speaking
engagements this year, and have already committed to those."
Structure
•
•
Set very clear guidelines for my assistant regarding:
o
how many engagements
o
how much travel
o
criteria and prioritization for selection
Establish a high fee structure for talks that will eliminate many requests
(but have a fee waiver process to allow politically important ones back in).
This tool is available online at
stproject.org/resources/tools-for-transformation
© 2013 Robert Gass | page 6
THE WHEEL OF CHANGE
A Model for Personal Transformation
Challenge #2:
I’m not getting sufficient exercise
The Plan:
Heart-Mind
•
Do some self-reflection why I’ve failed to be consistent in the past.
•
See what I might do differently this time.
•
Connect to the heartfelt desire for more exercise rather than exercise feeling
like something I should do.
Behavior
•
Commit to yoga class once a week and two 30-minute practice
sessions at home.
•
Commit to Zumba class twice a week. It’s more fun than
the workout machines that I consistently have failed to do regularly.
•
Engage my partner as an active support for my new choices.
Structure
•
Join the new health club that is a bit more expensive but much closer
to my house.
•
Buy a DVD yoga class to practice with at home, as I find it hard to do it
on my own without structure.
•
Find an exercise buddy who will go to Zumba with me. I seem to do better
with company.
•
Renegotiate carpool for picking up the kids from childcare to accommodate
the Zumba schedule.
•
Create a monthly checklist to track my exercise commitments.
By engaging in this systemic approach to change, we create a virtuous cycle in which
changes in one domain provoke and reinforce change in the other two domains.
The Wheel of Change is a model for transformation: change that is profound and
fundamental, altering the very nature of something. Transformational change is both
radical and sustainable. Something that is transformed will never go back to exactly what
it was before.
“We must be the change
we want to see in the world.”
Gandhi
This tool is available online at
stproject.org/resources/tools-for-transformation
© 2013 Robert Gass | page 7